Ice and Honor
by DisobedienceWriter
Summary: What if there were a little more magic in and among the Starks of Winterfell? This Ned Stark has to adjust to a different code of honor if he's going to save the lives of his family members.


Ice and Honor

X-X

A/N: It's been some time since I had a fanfiction idea. Sorry it's not Harry Potter or Naruto. Blame George Martin and the folks at HBO for producing Game of Thrones.

PLOT SPOILERS - VIOLENCE - SEXUAL SITUATIONS - LANGUAGE

Enough warning?

X-X

Chapter 1: Luwin

Maester Luwin knocked on the door and was bidden to enter.

Lord Stark was sitting at a table not reading the stack of papers in front of him. His mind wasn't set on administration this day. No wonder. There were heavier weights in Winterfell today.

The King was here with his wife, his children, and much of his court.

The King had come to ask, or demand, that Lord Stark return with the King's retinue to the capital, King's Landing, and take over the administration of the government as Hand of the King.

That was a sadness in itself because the prior Hand had been a kind of father figure to both King Robert and Lord Stark. He'd perished within the last month in King's Landing under suspicious circumstances. The rumors spoke of poison. They spoke of poison that emanated from the King's family, from the Lannisters that had married into House Baratheon. A daughter to be a Queen; a gold mine and stacks of debt to pay for the government and the King's excesses.

So there was no Hand. There was barely any government. No money, no hope, Luwin had heard from many of the voices that spoke to him.

The Hand would have to be Lord Stark.

That weighed on Luwin's Lord and Master, but not as much as a fresher disaster. (How come disaster followed wherever the king and queen went?)

Two days before Lord Stark's son, Bran, had gone climbing as he often did and fell from a tower. Luwin had spent the last two days trying to help the young Bran. The rumors that had spread in Winterfell were not good.

Which led to this small room and a powerful man who had shut himself up in it, as far away as he could manage to get from his duties. Lord Stark was grieving at a time and a place where he couldn't grant himself the freedom. He was disconnected from the world, but he wasn't able to heal.

Luwin could help, somewhat, with that.

"My Lord?" Luwin inquired.

Lord Stark, so lost-looking, blinked and then stared up at Luwin. The Lord didn't say anything. Perhaps he couldn't muster the energy. He waited for whatever Luwin had come to explain. He looked as friendly as a feral, wounded wolf, starving for food and warmth and hope.

Luwin was glad he had good news to deliver.

"My Lord, Bran will live."

"What did you say?"

"Bran will live."

Lord Stark just closed his eyes. He said nothing out loud. Perhaps he gave a silent prayer.

Luwin didn't say the word miracle although that was what it had to be.

Bran had climbed at least forty feet off the ground before he 'fell.' He shouldn't have survived the event, but he had. He would. Bran was still unconscious, but the boy was alive. Luwin and several of his colleagues were now sure of it.

Luwin waited for his Lord. He could read the relief that flooded through the man. He was stoic as a Lord must be when under the gaze of his own lord, the visiting King Robert. But there was just Lord Stark and Luwin inside this room.

Lord Stark was a devoted father. The heaviness about him began to dissipate. Very good. Luwin needed Lord Stark's complete attention now.

"Have you told Catelyn yet?" Lord Stark asked.

His voice sounded rough and unused, cracking now from just four words. His agony had been a silent one, but it had done damage throughout his whole body.

"Not yet." Luwin shook his head.

It was important Bran's mother know, but not as important as the rest of the news Luwin had to deliver.

"She is my next stop, my Lord."

A stop that might be very delayed. Depending on how Lord Stark acted, or reacted, to the other parts of what Luwin had to say.

Luwin hoped he had the right measure of Lord Stark.

He hoped.

"Thank you, Luwin. Thank you for saving Bran."

"It was he that fought. It was he that survived, my Lord."

Lord Stark still gave the credit to Luwin. Undeserved.

Bran Stark had delivered a small miracle. Luwin, and several others, had just been on hand to lend what little help they could.

"Please let Lady Stark know. I'm going to look in on him now."

This was the moment. Lord Stark could move off his mental concern for his son. He could let a new topic weigh down his mind.

This was the moment so Luwin pushed forward.

"If I might have an extra moment..."

Lord Stark had been half-risen from his seat.

"Winterfell never rests. Please tell me your concerns," Lord Stark said.

Luwin shut the door, threw the bolt, and stepped further into the room.

"That kind of concern?" Lord Stark asked.

He sat back down again.

"I am afraid so, my Lord."

The good news about Bran could be shared among the servants and, eventually, with the entirety of Winterfell. Many ears had just heard what Luwin had said, he was sure. Bran's survival could be or would be public knowledge soon.

The rest of it... Luwin now broached danger. Secrets and truth and high politics. These were not fit topics for the servants and the populace of Winterfell.

Luwin needed to ease Lord Stark into some unpleasantness now. The unpleasant first before the devastating. "Your son may not walk."

Luwin was going slow. Slower than he needed to, but he was also testing Lord Stark. Luwin thought the man could be trusted, but the real message he had come to deliver made him question everything he believed.

Even Lord Stark. Perhaps unfairly.

So Luwin would test, Luwin would hope.

"Not walk?" Lord Stark reacted like someone had pummeled his own spine with a hammer. His face flashed with pain and he almost resembled outwardly the caring father that he was deep inside himself. He recovered his composure, but his mind was now fixated on tiny legs that might never move again.

Luwin was sure enough of that.

This felt like torture to Luwin, but he had to be sure of his lord.

"But Bran will live, you said that."

"He will live. There were three Maesters here, visiting me..."

Lord Stark shook his head. "Inquisitors, you mean. From the Citadel."

Lord Stark knew more of the Citadel's ways than he should. He not only had eyes, he used them, even when he was under great strain. Luwin was glad of it just now.

"Yes, my Lord," Luwin admitted. "All four of us concur. One, Maester Tumbalt, is far more skilled in healing than I. Bran will recover faster because of his efforts."

"Good. Give them my thanks."

Luwin didn't move.

"Is that all?"

No, Luwin didn't say. The good news was not why Luwin was so nervous. In fact, this was the last moment of peace Lord Stark would ever feel in his life. Luwin knew that, but Lord Stark didn't. Not yet.

Lord Stark wanted to be off to visit the sick chamber of his son, but Luwin had secrets he needed to feed to his Lord. Luwin stood and tried to decide how to do the rest, how to form up the very words.

"One more thing."

Luwin almost flinched at his own tone. He had given something away, that this was that important. More important than the life or death of a son. Lord Stark gave way his distraction.

He was now looking at Luwin rather than the chamber door.

"I have already bid you to speak, Luwin. Normally you do not hesitate to say the things that need saying. Please tell me what you came here to tell me."

Luwin nodded. He would try.

"The three visitors, the inquisitors, came to discuss my conduct with me. It's a regular thing now for all maesters. Since one of us went so wrong - the former Maester Qyburn, my lord, the Experimenter or the Butcher - the Citadel has increased its vigilance."

"I'm sorry to hear of it." Lord Stark had no patience for excess wind.

"Well, Archmaester Valgut put himself among the inquisitors because he had been reading far back in the chronicles. Apparently your deep ancestors had a collection of...well, artifacts."

It was an uncomfortable word for Luwin to say. There was another word he'd prefer to use, but this was not something that a Maester liked to speak about with his Lord.

"Are you referring to magic, Luwin?"

Luwin was glad that Lord Stark got the reference even though Luwin was dancing around the word. "Yes, my Lord."

"A maester came here to look at a magical artifact belonging to House Stark?"

Lord Stark was deeply unhappy now.

"He didn't explain that part of his mission until he'd been here some time. He actually waited until he and the others had helped Bran."

"So you felt indebted?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"This is not a rumor Winterfell needs."

Lord Stark wasn't surprised that magic seekers would come here. It wasn't well known — nor was it completely hidden — that the Starks did have a funny relationship with things no one could seem to explain. Premonitions, in particular. Usually one person in every other generation could foretell things with surprising accuracy. That particular aspect of the Starks of Winterfell was not supposed to circulate, even among the maesters of the Citadel.

But Luwin had personally known Lord Stark's late Great Aunt, a long-lived woman with a tremendous mind and an even more tremendous ability to foretell events. She had given unheeded warnings to many a Stark. Particularly the ones who were shortly dead.

Including, Luwin remembered, Lord Stark's father and brother.

The diviner's words were rare, but weightless to those who should treasure them the most. It was always that way. A blessing, a curse, a burden.

"A curious maester." Lord Stark was more than unhappy. He was thinking about ways to make a person uncurious.

Lord Stark had his son back, but he had an Archmaester digging in things he shouldn't.

"Worse," Luwin said. "A very senior figure at the Citadel. Not well respected because of his interest in magic. But a little influence, a little power. In possession of a number of secrets about the Citadel."

A blackmailer, Luwin said without saying.

"He didn't come asking questions about the family, about my great aunt?" Lord Stark asked.

Or the others further back in the line.

"I do not believe so."

"He came to ask about some urn or something? An enchanted sword?"

"A bowl, my Lord."

Lord Stark had no patience for this conversation. "Did you find it? Is it lost to us or something?"

"Well, your late brother, Brandon, he was also interested in the history of the Starks. He expected to rule Winterfell and so he wanted to be prepared for even the strange things that might happen. My predecessor, first, and later I helped him track down what bits of Stark physical history still remained. We stored quite a few artifacts in a special chamber off the crypt."

"I don't remember that."

"I believe you were being fostered by Lord Arryn then. With the future King Robert."

Lord Stark nodded.

"Archmaester Valgut had a copy of the passage in one of the chronicles about this bowl. He had very specific descriptions of it. That was how we were able to find it among a dozen other bowls, among a thousand bits of historical rubbish. Broken swords and shields and antique silver plate."

"You found this thing?" Lord Stark confirmed. "The thing he came for, you found it that quickly."

He was a bit skeptical.

"Yes," Luwin said. There was some regret in the word, but Luwin also let loose excitement and fear.

"He didn't steal it or something?"

"I'm sure the idea would have occurred to him. But, no. It remains in your possession, my Lord."

"So, what is the bad news?"

"From the records, he knew how to, well, prepare it. He explained the process. It sounded like it wouldn't harm the artifact. It was a lark, my Lord. I didn't expect anything at all to happen."

"So you let him?" Lord Stark leaned forward.

"I apologize, but I did."

"Your curiosity knows no bounds, Luwin." He tried to inject some levity into the words, but Lord Stark was unhappy.

"I'm sorry, my Lord."

"I hope you don't give out our secrets to anyone who comes asking for them."

"I apologize." He had known Lord Stark wouldn't approve. Apologies were easier than asking for permission. And Luwin had been almost as curious as the Archmaester. One wouldn't survive the rigors of maester-training without supreme curiosity.

"You found the bowl. You had the process. Did it do anything?"

Lord Stark was evidently hoping for a 'no.'

"The ritual was short and effective. The strange little wooden bowl with writing none of us could decipher turned into some kind of metal."

"It transformed? What kind of person puts effort into a ritual that transforms a wooden bowl into a metal one?"

Luwin persevered. "It was also icy to the touch. Its material and its temperature was not its purpose, but they were indicators that the preparation was done correctly."

"An icy bowl? We have plenty of ice north of the wall." Lord Stark looked north and almost smiled.

The wall. Icy like the wall. That did make Luwin think for a moment. Perhaps the creation of the one had led to the creation of the other.

The wall was monstrous in height, an ancient reminder of wars between man and ice creatures.

A defense that the world would soon remember wasn't just a reminder.

Luwin had had the icy bowl in his possession for almost a full day now. He was a much different person now.

Luwin took a deep breath. He would have to trust in this Lord Stark, in his deepest qualities of honor and fidelity.

Luwin was about to shatter what Lord Stark thought he knew.

"It was a diviner's bowl, my Lord."

Luwin watched his Lord.

The face said it all. Eddard Stark didn't want to believe, but there were the things his late relative could predict. She had been an undeclared diviner.

Luwin watched his Lord struggle with the information. For the moment, it seemed to be whether or not to believe. Soon he would have to grapple with the implications. A good man with a diviner's bowl, he might survive the temptations. A shaky man with such a power would surely become a tyrant with it.

Knowledge, perfect knowledge, readily believed, was more powerful than any army.

"I didn't know that when we started," Luwin apologized. "The Archmaester withheld that information from me as he sought permission to use it."

"A political creature lying. I've met a few like that," Lord Stark said. "Continue."

"Valgut had spent a lifetime looking for hints of magic and then taking fantastic trips to see if there was any proof. Now that he is approaching the end of his life, he limited himself to easier journeys. He came here looking for a magical relic and he found it. We confirmed that it works, my Lord."

Lord Stark was mentally adrift at the moment.

"Could my Great Aunt have..."

He reached for an analogy he could comprehend.

"Hers was a natural talent. She needed no artifact," Luwin said.

"This bowl could do the same thing? You confirmed it worked."

"Yes, my Lord. The bowl does work. It is, if anything, even more powerful than your Great Aunt."

For a moment, Lord Stark looked sick, well beyond just uneasy.

"You confirmed this."

"Yes, my Lord."

"What did you ask it? How did you confirm it wasn't just a trinket?"

"Since Bran's fall was so fresh to us, Archmaester Valgut completed the ceremony and then asked about the incident. How had Bran Stark fallen? His very words."

Now Lord Stark was out of the theoretical. He was plagued by this particular question.

"It showed us. He was pushed, my Lord."

Luwin watched Lord Stark as he said the words. He didn't have to be very skilled at reading people. Lord Stark put on a full display. Incredulity. Anger. Wrath.

For minutes, Lord Stark sat and worked to master his own particular weaknesses, his deep sense of honor (for honor was a handicap when facing those who didn't believe in such an idea) and his fast-to-boil wrath.

He got control of his own mind again and took the problems one at a time. First, whether he should believe at all. "Showed you? Showed you how?"

"After the Archmaester asked his question, a mist arose from the bowl. A frozen mist of white. There played a scene, like an artist with a brush rapidly putting life onto an icy canvas. But it was more than just moving images, my Lord. It was people, sounds, movements. It was almost like life, almost like being where Bran had been. In fact, the images must have been what Bran saw, my Lord. Where he went. What he heard. There were people who spoke to him, called him Bran."

Lord Stark's first look suggested he thought his Maester had gone quite insane. He knew better than to doubt something like this. He was ready to listen, ready to believe.

"This had better be the truth, Luwin. I would not be able to temper myself if this is but a child's fable."

"It is true, my Lord."

"Tell me. Now."

So Luwin told the tale. Bran's climbing, all the way up until he peered into an out-of-the-way cell in an old tower. Two people, two traitors, joined together in passion. A queen who was no faithful queen to her king-husband. A twin brother was more than a twin and more than a brother. The queen's screams about discovery; the brother's almost regretful acquiescence to her demands. The push. Bran's watching of the sky and the tower stones as he fell.

Lord Stark bellowed in rage.

Luwin stopped talking.

Slowly the rage depleted and Lord Stark returned to his senses.

"Thank you," Lord Stark said. "I had to know it. It was hard for you to tell me, but I had to know."

"I am sorry."

"I guess I must have been something of a diviner when I was younger. I once told Robert that joining up with the Lannisters was poison. It took a long time to have some definite proof. At the cost of Bran's legs."

"Yes, my Lord."

Lord Stark was quiet for a long period. Considering, weighing, planning.

"All four of you saw this?" Lord Stark asked.

He worried about the gossip now spreading around Winterfell. Luwin wondered at why Lord Stark asked the question. To save King Robert some pain — or was it for another reason?

"We did."

"Four people — now five — make it difficult to keep a secret."

Luwin agreed. He understood as many of the implications of the bowl as he had had time to consider. "I have the other three maesters in a dungeon cell. A closed cell that I tend myself. No words will emanate from there."

The tension in the room dropped back.

"I am sorry, Luwin."

With that, Luwin felt much more comfortable sharing all of this with Lord Stark.

Lord Stark knew about this magical relic and he was still himself, for the moment. The good Stark was holding good. If it were to become poison now...the world would burn. Lord Stark didn't see how powerful this bowl was, but it wouldn't take him long to understand where its power really was. A military man, an army, equipped with this bowl. Westeros and Essos and all the less well-known lands were nothing compared to that.

"You will be outcast from your own society," Lord Stark said.

It was true. Luwin's good reputation with his own people would be ruined for imprisoning the delegation. The Citadel would come looking for the Archmaester at the very least. They would send more people to investigate.

"I do not care about the Citadel now, my Lord."

They had trained Luwin in his youth. But the longer he was away from Oldtown, the more the politics of the Citadel lessened in appeal. The more false it all became in his memory. Someone like Valgut blackmailing himself into the inner circle, a fat, disgusting criminal.

No, Luwin was a Stark man, not a Citadel man.

"The Citadel will have your chain," Lord Stark said.

Luwin's badge of training, his mark of office.

"I think you will find that my priorities have changed now, my Lord."

Maesters would kill for what Luwin now possessed. A few of them studied magic in books. The others worked through problems of economy or history or medicine. Luwin had studied them all.

But this icy bowl, it changed all equations. Maester Luwin had beheld magic with his very eyes. He had answers to the questions few maesters could even bear to ask. He had been raised to recede from the world, but now he was part of it, an important part of it.

He had long ago made his choice of employer. Now he reaffirmed it was the correct choice. "I serve the Starks, my Lord," Luwin affirmed.

Lord Stark nodded absently. His mind was elsewhere for now. "None of them had a chance to send a message?"

"I realized what this meant as soon as we watched it. They were never out of my sight until they were in the cell. I hold the key to that wing in my pocket. It may be we have some gifted lock pickers in Winterfell, but I doubt they would think three fat maesters worth investigating. Not when we have wine by the barrel and the Queen's jewels and any of a dozen other temptations."

"True," Lord Stark said. "Wars have started for less than rumors of an artifact like this."

Lord Stark was finally grasping the implications. They were worse than he realized.

"My Lord, let me show you."

Lord Stark's mouth opened.

Then he shook his head.

"I cannot."

"My Lord?"

"No, Luwin. It was not — this bowl, it is not something that House Stark can use. We can't trust it. We can't cheat the gods in this way. This knowledge, it is their knowledge. Not ours."

Luwin hadn't expected this answer. Not at all.

But Lord Stark had always had a sticky sense of honor.

Until Lord Stark decided that formal honor was less important than other things — until he changed his own mind — there was nothing Luwin could do to win the argument.

"I will leave you, then."

"I'm sorry," Lord Stark said.

Luwin would hold his tongue.

This honor would destroy House Stark, though. Luwin knew it. Ned's steadfast honor. Robb's impetuous version. They would bring the house down stone by stone. Enemy by waiting enemy.

X-X

Chapter 2: Ned Stark

Ned hadn't slept in three days. He had sat with Bran, still unconscious, but improving. He had spoken with Catelyn. But his mind hadn't deviated a degree from what his maester had told him.

Now he was attending King Robert.

"We have to go today, Ned," the King said.

"Today?"

"Alright, tomorrow. We'd never get all of Cersei's dresses packed by night fall. Here a week and she brought enough fabric to build a thousand tents. Thin woman, too. Just says how many damned dressmakers I keep warm."

"I will give the orders, then," Ned said.

"You look like I've lopped off your head. You will like King's Landing."

"I will miss Winterfell," Ned said.

"Be gone with you, then. Moping people I have enough of. Say goodbye to your family, Ned."

"Aye, your Majesty."

Ned left the room, but he didn't walk to any person who needed to begin the packing. He walked to the rooms kept by Maester Luwin.

He knocked on the door and a voice bid himself.

Luwin got one look at Ned and then shot to his feet. "My Lord."

"Sit."

"Are you well, my Lord?"

"You put a monster in my head, Luwin."

"Yes, I'm sure. I apologize."

"I haven't thought of anything else in days. Now King Robert is demanding that we leave soon. Back to King's Landing."

"Ah."

"Let's see it then."

Luwin smiled, like a decade of winter had just broken and now the rays of the sun were beating down, melting all the cold away.

"I've set up a room for it."

"I'm in your hands, Luwin."

Luwin left first. Lord Stark plodded behind.

He hadn't been able to do anything but think of the damned bowl. He wanted to break it. He wanted to bury it, sink it deep in a sea. It should not exist.

But it did.

The talent existed in his family line, too. Then this bowl.

Sitting among his family's possessions for how long.

It maddened Ned.

If they'd believed his Great Aunt, his father and brother and sister would have survived the Targaryens.

If this bowl did what Luwin claimed, if he could watch an event, even the doubters among his own family would have believed that. Or at least not gone off to die needlessly.

Ned realized he had gotten ahead of his maester. All thinking and walking and not paying attention.

"Which way?" Ned asked.

Luwin pointed down one hall and then another. Lord Stark stopped in front of the door and tried to open it. The door wouldn't open. There wasn't even a visible hole for a key.

"I improved the lock, my Lord. If you'll let me..."

Ned stepped back.

Luwin allowed Ned to observe the process, but he didn't want to know. It was a heavy burden, this little bowl.

In a few moments they were in the room and then sealed inside.

"Tricky thing with the door," Ned said.

"I have something similar for the storeroom where I keep milk of the poppy. You wouldn't want a staff of addicts, my Lord."

The bowl - a plain, dark-colored thing just a bit smaller in diameter than Ned's hand - rested on a wooden table. The wood had the look of freezing upon it. Like it had been north of the Wall for some time. Even though the room was quite temperate.

"Show me this bowl at work," Lord Stark said.

Luwin pulled out a chair for Ned so he would be in front of the bowl.

"Sit down, Maester Luwin."

Luwin took a chair and performed the ritual. It didn't look like much, just dropping water into the frozen bowl. The water didn't freeze though.

"Ask it a question, my Lord."

Ned asked the same question that the Archmaester had, the one about Bran's fall.

A mist rose from the bowl. Ned looked inside the bowl. It was empty again.

The bowl had frozen the water and suspended the flakes in the air. The ice just hung there. That was a kind of miracle by itself. Then the images began. The sounds.

Ned watched and worked through the implications.

He listened to the Queen and the Kingslayer talking to each other and then to Bran.

Ned looked at them disheveled and unclothed.

"The beauty in that woman is all poison. Always has been," Ned said. "Even when Robert took a young woman as his wife, she was evil. She has just soured all the more in the years past."

Luwin said nothing. All the better. Ned wasn't feeling all that charitable.

The vision ended and the particles of white ice evaporated.

"Prepare it again," Ned said.

Luwin did.

Ned stared into the bowl. The liquid swirled and moved and rippled. It was no ordinary water. It acted like it was alive. It acted like it was eager to show itself off.

"You said that a maester came with a passage from a chronicle?" Ned asked.

"Yes, Archmaester Valgut copied it in his own hand."

"Might I see it, if you haven't already destroyed it?"

"Yes. Let me see. Here, here it is. I brought all of Valgut's belongings into this room."

Luwin handed over the document. Ned read the thing but it didn't expand what Ned had already seen. There was no context in the passage, no dates, no names. Nothing that Ned could have Luwin research in the Chronicles of Winterfell.

Who had made this icy bowl? When? Why had it fallen out of use?

Ned wanted to understand the bowl's implications. He was silent for some time, considering. "This bowl, if it's real and not just some cruel trick by a court magician, is worth more than twenty adult dragons to an army on the march."

"Yes, my Lord. I believe it is real. I believe it is even more powerful than twenty dragons."

Ned nodded.

"It's a marvel, a horrible marvel. For a military planner, there could be no more blessed gift. How to march, where to attack, how to destroy the opposing army..."

It would make an army invulnerable or as near to it as was possible.

"I could show this to Robert. He would believe it if he saw it."

Luwin opened his mouth, but said nothing. He was deeply unhappy now.

"Robert, my poor friend. Those two monsters so close to Robert. His queen, one of his Kingsguard. He could see it all here."

He could.

But five people knew now. Adding a sixth, a man that Ned couldn't consign to a dungeon cell, was not wise. This Robert was not the friend of Ned's youth.

This Robert was a blinded monster, a prisoner of King's Landing who was temporarily free of the place but desiring already to return to his gilded cell. He had poison walking around him in every direction, his wife, his guard, his chief financial backer. He was no longer Robert. He was a creature of the Lannisters so long as he had wine and women to dull the pain.

"I can't tell him, can I?" Ned asked his chief retainer.

"I'm afraid not. I don't know how you're going to handle King Robert."

Ned nodded. He didn't have a clue, either. He just knew that he had almost no time remaining.

"What else?" Ned demanded. "You are as stiff as a frozen deer right now. You've led me this far. Lead on, Luwin. You know something. Let's hear it."

Ned could read Luwin's expressions very well.

"A blonde queen, a blond brother. Blond children," Luwin said. "A dark-haired King, though. The bowl can't prove it exactly. But it can make a pretty convincing case."

Ned hadn't even... He felt sick. "The children even? All three of them."

"In private, the Queen and her brother occasionally speak of _their_ children. More proof than that I don't think the bowl can provide," Luwin said.

"Wars have started for less than a provocation than the Queen and the Kingslayer have provided. The Lannisters stealing the throne from House Baratheon."

"Yes, my Lord."

Ned had to dampen his rage. He had to think. Ned couldn't ask Robert for help. He was lord here in Winterfell, a head of a noble family, a family that had once been Kings of the North. He had to think differently about honor. He no longer owed it to Robert. Robert seemed to think nothing of honor now, nothing of wisdom or gentle rule. He needed to recast his idea of honor to the benefit of his family.

He needed a drink. He needed a two-day drunk, actually. But that would make the cleaning up of this mess all the harder. The King had asked Ned to become his Hand, to come to King's Landing. To start the moving process now so they could leave quickly.

Ned may never set foot again in the cess, but he could act like and think like the Hand of the King for now.

"Is there more?" Lord Stark asked while staring at the bowl. "News of this magnitude. Is it Bran?"

"Bran is a bright spot in all this," Luwin said.

"He has a family of his own?"

Luwin smiled. He just waved at the bowl.

"I'll take your grin as partial payment. What else, Luwin? What is worse than the Queen giving birth to her brother's children?"

"There is much more, much darker. You must ask the bowl difficult questions, hidden questions. Let it convince you."

Ned chewed over the words. He liked the advice. Rather than have Luwin spoon the grisly truth to him, he should discover it. The tool was right on the table.

"I will ask."

He stared at the swirling water in the bowl. He tried to think of a question. But his mind was blank just now. Of all the times...

"It doesn't just show the past?" Ned asked.

Luwin smiled again. "No, my Lord."

"You've hinted. It can show the future?"

"Probable futures, I think so. You name something you wish to change now and then you can see some person or place in the future. It is a true diviner's bowl, but the magic is within it, not within the person asking it questions. It is a miracle."

If an enemy ever got hold of this - and knew how to use it - Westeros would bleed. If might become a continent that was just a boneyard. Every living thing rotting above the ground because there was no one left to supply the burials.

"A miracle, yes. It might also be the worst plague any of us have ever looked upon."

He tucked away the future for now. Ned wanted to start in the past.

He realized what question he had to ask. "How did my father and brother die?"

Ned regretted the question within seconds. He watched the immolation of his father and his brother at the order of the previous, now dead, king. The last Targaryen. From the Mad King's vantage. Everything through the eyes of the madman.

Now Lord Stark not only knew what had happened; he'd seen it.

He looked at the empty bowl and wished he hadn't asked what he'd asked.

"I fought a war because this happened, but now I know. I will never unsee these details. I will never forget."

The bowl was real, was proved true. Ned would never doubt it again.

"There are many other things you must look at, my Lord," Luwin said.

Ned glared at the icy bowl. It was a gift and a curse.

"This thing is going to burden us both. It's going to kill us both," Ned said.

"Perhaps not if you use it to make good decisions. The right decisions. The very hardest kind," Maester Luwin said.

Ned had just had the skies crack open and a star crush his head. Or as near as he could imagine. His mind should be in a thousand different places, on weighty matters, but he was thinking of a throne room and its bloody past.

Could he make better decisions than his father and brother?

Now that he had this weapon in front of him.

Truth was a sharper thing that a sword. It struck with more force than a war hammer. It spared nobody.

The bowl.

Ned touched it. It was damned cold.

He couldn't understand the cold. He could understand the visions it provided. It was truth and it was magic. He was wary, but there was no one who could fabricate all this. Not even the Citadel's most accomplished maesters, nor the greatest conjuror from Lys.

It was Other than human-made.

It was inexplicable as magic must also be.

It was horrible and true and devastating.

"What is it made of?" he asked his Maester.

Ned needed time.

He knew that Luwin couldn't tell him how this magic was made. Instead, Ned just wanted Luwin talking, postulating.

Luwin obliged. "It was wood before the ritual. Now it appears closest to dragon glass."

"But it isn't glass. It's metal."

"Yes. Not steel, not bronze, not silver. None of those colors. You touched it, it's very cold."

Ned looked at the bowl. He didn't want to engage it again. Luwin already knew what it would tell him, show him. Nothing good.

If Luwin had led with an attempt by the Lannisters to steal the Iron Throne and the name of House Baratheon...what was he being more deliberate about?

"What questions did you ask it?" Ned asked.

Here Luwin looked uncomfortable. Of course he'd run this miracle through every minor quibble he could think of. If he were a true academic, Luwin could publish books until he died alleging the most incredible things.

But Luwin knew there was no time for books. This was a general's tool, a warrior's tool.

"Many things, my Lord."

Luwin didn't want to talk.

"Tell me."

"What I learned was troubling, my Lord. War."

Ned already had guessed that. Robert wasn't paying attention to anything. He couldn't keep Westeros together, not when his own House was filled with enemies.

Ned wanted to know about the war, its size, its causes, its contests.

"How does it begin? What trigger?"

Luwin hemmed and delayed. He didn't want to answer that question.

"Luwin, please tell me."

The maester swallowed. "Winter will arrive. King Robert will be dead within the year."

It was obvious enough. The signs. But this news still hit Ned very hard.

"How?"

"Either murdered or succumbed to the damage he's done to his own body. I've seen several variations depending upon the questions I ask."

Ned closed his eyes. Luwin had used the last few days to continue posing questions to the bowl.

Robert, though. Ned was already mourning him. Were there harder words to hear? _Your one-time friend will die badly._ He was now a creature of King's Landing, but a friend was always at least a little bit a friend. Even one changed so much in body, in mind, in spirit. Robert had become cruel and worthless, but there was a bit of the old Robert trapped somewhere inside him.

"So we'll fight a new war over the succession?" Ned asked. "Over the blond bastards taking the Iron Throne?"

"There are different ways it could go, but there will be war. Over succession or other issues. There is also..."

"Let's stay with the war of succession."

"Yes, my Lord. If you had gone to King's Landing, it would have been to discover who murdered your mentor, Lord Arryn, and to protect King Robert. The bowl will tell you about Lord Arryn's death if you ask."

After what he seen of his father and his brother... "No, I trust you, Luwin."

Ned stared at Luwin, bidding him to speed up the revelations.

"There are several problems in King's Landing. At least that I know about now. There could be a hundred more, but you have to ask the right questions."

"Luwin, I'm not going to walk over the same territory you already have."

"The bowl scares you..."

"Of course it does," Ned said. "Dire wolves shouldn't be south of the wall. My little boy shouldn't have almost perished. This bowl shouldn't exist. These are all portents and House Stark has always recognized the danger of magic. It has done us far more harm than benefit. My Great Aunt knew this more than the rest of us. So, the bowl scares me. Magic scares me. I respect its power, but I'd prefer not to interact with it. If I can."

Luwin was quiet while he grappled with what Ned had explained. Finally the older man nodded. "If you do as the King asks, take up the office he gave you, join your house with his through marriage, pledging Sansa to the oldest bastard child of King Robert, and travel to King's Landing, you will make certain choices, trust certain people."

"And fail?"

"Yes."

"Of course I would. I am no politician. Being Lord of Winterfell is nothing compared to the Southern Cess."

Luwin nodded, but he was taking care of how he selected his words.

"If you were to go, you would do your best to run the country for the friend you remember, for King Robert. But he is as corrupt as anyone down there. He would still die. Your efforts to have Joffrey labeled a bastard would fail. The cruel young man would become the new king. He would resent the rumors of his bastardy and have you executed for treason. That could spark a war."

That was worse than anything Ned contemplated. "No Stark will ever perish in King's Landing again. I will have it taken down stone from stone. A war over such a dirty cess."

"My Lord, either your death or your continuing life will bring about a war. It will happen," Luwin said.

The bowl at least spoke clearly. Luwin was trying to play interpreter, to condense the hours he'd spent examining it.

"There are situations where I need not die?" Ned asked.

"Many."

"What do I need to do?"

"There are combinations, my Lord. Trade offs."

There was the Luwin-of-Many-Mouths.

"How do I prevent the war?" Ned asked.

"I haven't been able to put a question to the bowl yet that didn't result in a long winter and a horrible war. A war that begins between people, but continues, harder, among creatures that aren't human."

That had been what Luwin had been trying to say before. This wasn't just one war, a little civil war over the succession. There was something else waiting to subsume the minor squabble.

Creatures...

"The Others? Above the wall? The ice demons."

"The bowl isn't as clear about them, but they seem to be already in motion, my Lord. They have been building strength for the last few winters if not longer."

Was there more news that would drive a spear through Ned's brain?

The death of King Robert. A civil war. The oldest enemies of man, supernatural enemies, moving about, climbing out of tales told to terrify children to restart a war. All in succession if Luwin and this bowl spoke true.

"But there are ways to keep the toll lower for the Starks, my Lord," Luwin said.

Ned wanted that. But as selfish as he wished he could be, he had to see if there were other combinations. Better ones.

"How about for all men?" Ned asked.

"Not that I've found. Not yet. There are combinations, as I said. We could suffer greater losses and the Lannisters, for example, could survive better."

"Upon my crushed skull it will be that way. Lannisters, pretenders to the throne. Can't win it in battle so they try to win it in the bed chamber. No, the Starks and Winterfell and the North must be our priorities."

Luwin smiled. He had, at the very least, picked his own words carefully. Gotten a result he seemed to want.

Ned would have to be careful even around his most trusted advisor.

"The Starks must survive," Ned affirmed.

That was his first order as the General of an army that didn't yet exist. Ned realized the weight of his words. So did Luwin.

Now that Ned had set a direction for himself he had to figure out how to meet it. He had to set a true test for the icy bowl.

Ned looked away from the table, toward Luwin.

"We've tested the past. Me with my two questions. You with however many. We know that this artifact can reach back. I could ask it what happened at this battle or that and I believe it would show me what I expect," Lord Stark said. "How do we test to see if this bowl knows anything true about the future?"

Now he was thinking as a war planner.

"We will ask it a question and prove whether it knows or not," Luwin said. "Something neither of us can control. Something that could have a wide range of outcomes. Something that is of low importance."

Ned nodded.

A little test before they tried for bigger tests.

That left aside the difficulty of knowing whether a thing predicted in the near future was the same as looking at a prediction far into the future. Neither of them seemed ready to wait to see if a five year prediction came true.

"What do we ask?" Ned wanted to know.

"What will Queen Cersei dine on in the morning?"

Ned's mind flashed to an obscene joke concerning the queen and her choice of morning sausage-like delicacies. He chose not to say the words to Luwin.

Ned agreed.

"It's a fine question. It depends upon what the kitchen prepares, then the whims of a vile woman. I don't know her habits well enough in King's Landing or at Casterly Rock to hazard a guess."

"We also won't have long to wait to determine if the icy bowl is correct or not."

So Luwin asked the question of the bowl.

He then wrote down the answer. He and Ned both had the answer. Half a glass of pressed juice and about a third of a sausage. Also a conversation with her younger brother, Tyrion, the half-man, that put her off the rest of her meal.

Ned already knew this was exactly what would happen the next morning. But Luwin would be there to observe. Ned was supposed to be organizing a departure for the King and his people.

Lord Stark still had to decide how to proceed. There was no time to think. King Robert was making demands. The people who had attacked Bran were here in Winterfell now and would soon be gone.

"We have the rest of the day to start planning," Ned said. "We need to make our first move tomorrow morning, disrupt King Robert's attempt to depart Winterfell."

"Yes, my Lord."

Luwin sounded hugely relieved.

"Think of how to prove the queen is no true queen, that the Kingslayer sports with her in the bed. We need Robert on our side while he's still alive. We need a way to prove this that doesn't cause his heart to break."

"A tall order."

"These ones are first because they have been guests here, guests who would put my blood, my son's blood, on their hands. They must be first. They will not slink back into King's Landing."

Ned, as was right, would always think of his family first. Keep them safe; if not that, cut off the heads of those who dared attack them.

"You mean to kill them?" Luwin asked.

His tone was one of caution.

"I wish I could."

"My Lord…"

"I won't. I'd prefer to send them all away. Robert brought the monsters here. He just didn't listen to me. There was Robert's Rebellion. Maybe it's time for Ned's Rebellion."

Luwin was even more disturbed by that.

"Luwin, I swear I will not kill a guest in my home."

"You won't let them free?"

Ned wouldn't let the Lannisters walk away from almost murdering his child. They had profited from their support of the Mad King. They had spent almost two decades occupying the principle offices of Westeros. They would pay for this attack on House Stark.

"No. I will not let them free to make fresh trouble," Ned said.

Luwin was stumped. "My Lord?"

"There are more ways to start a war than murder, Maester Luwin. I won't let someone take my head. Nor will I take theirs. I will make them wish I had been so lenient. Tywin Lannister, the father of this pack of monsters, will wish he had never procreated."

Luwin thought he understood. "More cells in the dungeon?"

Luwin sounded disappointed, not that he would admit it. If the war was going to be as wide as Luwin said, throwing people in dungeons was a waste.

"Can you not think of worse things than killing. For a spoiled, curdled woman like the queen, her little spawn, the brother-father? I can think of worse things that are also more useful than dungeons. We're men of the North."

Luwin could only nod. "Yes, my Lord."

"Now, Luwin?"

Lord Stark looked troubled.

"Yes?"

"My wife."

"Ah," Luwin said. "Do you wish her advice on this?"

"Gods, no. Ten times no. Her particular conception of the seven gods isn't as forgiving of magic as the Old Gods. Remember how I reacted to all this. She would never come around. Not that I was fast to do so, but she would be unyielding, unthinking."

"What do you wish me to say to Lady Catelyn?" Luwin asked.

"Nothing. Ever. She is a good woman, but this is not a secret she needs to help hold."

Luwin nodded. "Yes, my Lord."

Luwin nodded. He still looked like there was more to come.

"Something else? Can the Wall get up on legs and dance around?" Ned asked.

"There is one other thing I've worked out, my Lord."

"Please."

"This came from Archmaester Valgut, from the chronicles he consulted. I have managed to confirm it to some extent. The Warden of the North - you, of course, but probably also your whole family line - have unique strength, longevity, and good fortune so long as you remain in the north. In the cold lands between here and the wall, even a bit north of the wall. But if you were to venture even as far south as Moat Cailin, the bond between the Starks and this land, it weakens. You were terribly lucky during Robert's Rebellion when you were far away from your lands."

"I wouldn't call any of that luck."

"You must never leave Winterfell, or the land even two hours south by horse, once this war begins."

Ned's father and brother and sister had. Many of the people who had died in his long family line, they had gone to distant wars.

Lord Stark considered what he'd been told.

"This was in a book?" Ned asked.

"A different chronicle than the one that discussed the bowl, but Archmaester Valgut spent his life accumulating bits of rumor."

"My family knew this at some point?"

"I believe so."

"How did this treasure of knowledge make it into a book?"

"I can ask the Archmaester. Since he is in the dungeons, I don't know that he will be in much mood to answer me."

"Yes, there is that."

Luwin waited. Lord Stark wouldn't need to leave Winterfell. He'd said it himself in a way. He could start this war with a provocation so great that his opponents would happily come to him.

He had several of the most evil people in the realm enjoying - abusing - his hospitality at this very moment.

"If they think I'm pinned down here, they'll come, won't they?"

"Yes, my Lord."

Lord Stark took his time working through the morass. He was hot to anger in some moments, but he was calling upon deep, unknown wells of patience now.

Luwin felt compelled to push the case further. "It's dangerous for your bannermen and their lands, but yes. They..."

"The Lannisters, you mean. The family of the queen, of the bastard-heirs to the throne. Unless we do something, they're about to win it all. They'll fight for this. To possess the kingdom, even Tywin Lannister would come to a land where he didn't understand and fight in battles he wouldn't win. Not if he threw a hundred thousand men at us."

"I hope so, my Lord."

"You counsel ambush, preemptive war, dishonesty?" Ned asked.

The bluntness, the uncomfortable bluntness.

"Yes, my Lord."

That did stump Ned for a moment. He could see the outlines of the plan clearly, but it made him uncomfortable in many different ways. The Starks were a family of honor and tradition. Of oaths. The Starks didn't break them, but they would travel the frozen lands making sure oathbreakers paid in blood. Now Ned was facing this… A war of his own manufacture.

"We're cheating. So it will be a slaughter?"

Luwin said nothing for almost a minute.

Ned kept waiting for an answer.

"Not exactly," Luwin finally said. "The right people safe; the wrong people dead."

"If we can prove the future viewing abilities of this bowl, I will make that promise for my family. To keep them alive. To keep my lands safe. To put my enemies into rocky graves."

"I will help you, my Lord. I promise that," Luwin said.

X-X

Chapter 3: Varys

Varys, the formal spy master in the court of the Iron Throne, usually called the Master of Whisperers, couldn't think of a more unpleasant way to travel than in a closed carriage with Baelish and Pycelle. The brothers Baratheon, in the first carriage, had to be equally uncomfortable as Renly hated Stannis and Stannis didn't have much use for his younger brother. But the whole small council had been summoned to that horrible, stinking ice brick called Winterfell.

They could have complied or resigned.

Obviously they all liked their titles too much to say 'no.'

Varys admitted he was too fat and too soft to enjoy this kind of travel on horrible roads.

It was a waste of his time, for one. It was also vastly uncomfortable. Then there were the travel companions.

Dangerous idiots, both of them.

"Have you had a raven from the King?" Baelish asked. He merited the title of Lord, but Varys never added it, except in jest. He was formally the Master of Coin, but he made his personal fortune renting out the bodies of young women. He was a pander, a whore master.

Baelish was as much a lord as a stone in the road was a prince of the realm.

"A raven?" Pycelle asked. "No."

Pycelle was the head maester in Westeros. He had held the position for many years, fended off all challengers. He might look like a doddering old man, but none of his political faculties had left him yet. He was brilliant and utterly corrupt.

"You, Varys?" Baelish asked.

Varys shook his head. He had plenty of news from his spies. None from the King.

Robert didn't like Varys. Thought him useful, hadn't put him to the sword. But he didn't communicate with his Master of Whisperers. At least not often, not unless he was forced. That had been one of Jon Arryn's many jobs. Before Lord Arryn perished.

Varys suspected two of the three people in this carriage had had something to do with that. Varys was not one of the three.

"I have not had a raven from the King in three weeks," Grand Maester Pycelle continued.

By now, no one was all that interested.

"He was busy with his boars," Baelish said. He had that evil little smile on his thin, untrustworthy face.

Varys wondered about these boars. Or perhaps whores who didn't belong to Petyr.

"At least it's only a few miles more," Baelish said.

He was trying to fill in the silence.

Varys was well at home with his thoughts. Had he been alone in the carriage he might have welcomed the time for thought. He had plans and plans within plans. It was sometimes useful to run them through forward and backward. Determine which pieces were weakest, most likely to snap.

It was useful mental exercise.

But not while Pycelle and Baelish were trying to fill the silence. Varys doubted either one could hold a thought in head. They were both dangerous, but dull knives rather than sharp. Many a man had died from a blade that couldn't hold a sharp edge. They killed by suggestion or inaction rather than direct violence. Weasels.

"This is barely a King's Road," Pycelle complained. "My back will never recover. This road is a ditch. It doesn't deserve the name of King's Road."

Varys didn't disagree, but he was tired of listening to Pycelle. He then looked out at the passing forest.

Pretty enough, but alien. All the trees and fresh air.

His place was the close alleys of the city.

He didn't care for the openness of this place.

Oh, he didn't mind the cleanliness of the air. That was something to enjoy. But there were no people here. None aside from the guards in the procession. His business was people. Finding them, finding out their minds, bending their minds to his purposes.

Varys wasn't a master of trees.

He was a master of people.

This whole exercise was wasted time, a fool's errand done by fools at the order of the King Fool.

Said King Fool had left King's Landing three months prior. Then the ravens returned periodically. He was hunting. He was planning with Ned Stark. He had lost twenty pounds off his fat frame. He drank less; he whored more, consuming them faster than Tyrion Lannister. He looked ten years younger. The King was alive again, the reports from various sources read.

Oh, good. Robert had ideas again. He wasn't some wight in a crown.

Then came the ravens bearing orders. Not so good. Especially the order 'travel to Winterfell.' Plan to spend two to four weeks.

That was the beginning of this hell.

The orders had given a date by which they must commence. They left about one hour before the deadline. None of them wished to make the journey. Stannis least of all. He had fled King's Landing after Jon Arryn's death. Only strict orders had brought him back and put him in this motley collection.

They were all disgusted with each other. Their different styles, their different lies had worn away to nothing. Pycelle's especially. Pycelle tried to tell stories, but often fell asleep before he got to the point.

Varys knew the old man wasn't that broken down. He was playing games. Varys loved to play games. Like the most embarrassing way to have Pycelle murdered and discovered.

Not that he would.

Varys was having a tough time figuring out this summon to Winterfell, though.

Robert and his mutable obsessions. He was back to playing King again. He'd gone sober and now wondered what the hell had happened to his kingdom — or something.

So many years of hunting and whoring and wasting the coin of the realm, taking on more debt from the Lannisters and the Iron Bank of Braavos and who knew where else. Baelish wasn't saying. Varys kept tabs on the known sources of funds, but what he didn't know he didn't know.

So much ruin. So much money frittered away.

So little to show for it. King Robert the Wasteful.

No, Varys really didn't have much regard for that monster. He was slightly less monstrous than the previous monster. He burned no one to death.

Pycelle and Baelish began a discussion of the different women they preferred. Dornish or Myrish or Volantish. A conversation meant to make Varys uncomfortable. The whore sampler and the whore master.

Didn't work. They were poking Varys at what they thought was his uncomfortable spot, that he had been made a eunuch when he was very young.

It was a loss, of course. But Varys didn't let these people make him uncomfortable.

Varys could start a conversation on poisons. Perhaps what exotic poisons had been in King's Landing the day Jon Arryn died.

That would make them sweat. But then they'd do something stupid. As if they were capable of more. Varys had set his plans in motion. He hid them beneath trifles, but Baelish was a dog hunting for a mushroom. He could smell only surface trifles, the obvious clues Varys left.

Varys did not find his opinion much improved regarding Pycelle. He was an aging, but well-paid creature of the Lannisters. Varys knew. He coopted some of the women that Tywin paid for. He knew what Pycelle liked, what he could still manage to perform.

Disgusting work, some of it, the life of a Master of Whisperers.

A shout from outside brought Varys's attention. The guards babbled at each other. In the distance in front of the dour Winterfell was a collection of tents, brightly decorated and of garish fabric.

"Are they holding a harvest fair?" Baelish asked.

He sounded like a small, stupid child.

Of all of them Baelish was most glad to come. His not-so-secret infatuation with Cat Tully, Cat Stark. Perhaps he'd sneak off, pin the woman to a wall and molest her. In his fantasies alone.

Lady Stark could see a monster and smell it. That much he gathered from his informers.

Varys wished people weren't so easy to unravel. Not many gave him a challenge these days. Would anyone here be even the slightest bit difficult, these provincials?

Not if King Robert was the most sophisticated oaf in the place. Or Cersei or Tyrion.

X-X

Chapter 4: Varys

The caravans pulled into the tent city, not into Winterfell proper. Varys was the last out of the carriage. His body ached. He couldn't afford to look and feel weak at the present so he spent some time peering around. Someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to welcome them.

He did appreciate effort.

Even silly little tents.

He would rather get down to business, though.

Varys wanted answers.

Why had Robert pulled them like leeches off their patient?

Ser Barristan Selmy, the leader of Robert's Kingsguard, was there to greet them. He was nominally a member of the small council, too, although Robert had never permitted him to take his seat. Ser Barristan directed them into the largest of the tents.

It was cool and well lit. But there were no answers here. No Robert to ask. No Cersei, the demon cat. No Jaime. Ser Barristan was the last one inside. There was another man. Had to be Ned Stark, tall, rugged, mean.

"Welcome to Winterfell," Ned Stark said.

"What beautiful tents you have erected…" Pycelle started to say.

"Who are you to demand we come here?" Renly Baratheon interrupted.

Varys shook his head, but not so many would notice. Renly was a problem.

Lord Stark didn't flinch at the little dog barking. "I am Hand of the King to Robert the First. His small council must be where he is. He's at Winterfell now. So are you."

"You can't just drag us up here," Renly said.

Varys didn't disagree, but he wasn't about to say those words to this particular Lord. If Varys remembered correctly, and he did, Ned Stark had almost taken Varys' head during Robert's Rebellion.

Let Renly play the obvious fool in front of a dangerous man, a man of violence unlike the tamer creatures of the small council.

Let Ned Stark take out his anger on the King's brother, all the better to inspire anger in the king. Get him frothing.

Renly owed his position on the small council entirely to his biological relationship to Robert Baratheon. He had no special training in the law nor no particular deftness with the subject. In fact, Varys believed him thoroughly unfit for his position as Master of Laws. All the better for Varys if the small council was a debating society and he was given little challenge to do what he needed.

Ned Stark was a lesser known quantity. All the better to hobble him now if possible.

Let Ned quarrel with Renly which could start a quarrel with Robert. Perhaps Renly would get the bump to being the Hand of the King, making him the most powerful person in Westeros and also the most useless. That would suit Varys very well.

Varys looked back at the gathering argument between Renly and Ned.

"I understand that all of you are tired. It's not my place to teach you your duties and responsibilities. If Jon Arryn didn't manage it, then there is no way that I will be able to."

Varys smiled. Very tricky. Self-deprecating and insulting at the same instant.

Renly, of course, puffed up. He sputtered out some nonsense.

Eventually Ned put an end to all of it. "The King can summon you," Lord Stark replied. "As can I. You are all free to resign your positions and walk back to King's Landing. The carriages will be necessary for your successors, of course."

Varys did like this one. Ned Stark hadn't even raised his voice. A sharp man, well prepared to do a little scuffling in the opening minutes.

He was handling the first challenges well. But this was a formal meeting. Wait until they were all free to move around, not announce their positions, find assistants close to the Stark family, plot some more. Winterfell wasn't a boiling pot of shadows, but it could be without much effort.

Stark was going to regret bringing them here. They would trash the place for the next twenty years, make it so poisonous the Starks would voluntarily abandon it. Varys would buy out the loyalty of every servant he could get in contact with.

Varys set it as his week's work: make Winterfell a hellish hole for the people who voluntarily remained here.

"Where is the King, my brother?" Renly asked. He was no more polite now that he'd been bloodied once.

Renly didn't learn from one swat.

No, he had to go and remove all doubt about his idiocy. Always tying himself to his brother, the King. As if this group didn't know it well. A young idiot claiming power for himself by reminding everyone he had no power.

Varys no longer bothered to send Renly male whores. There was little substance in his skull. No plots worth spoiling; they blew up on their own. Renly couldn't hold a plot in his head that wasn't completely obvious.

"Where is the King?" Ned parroted.

"Yes."

"Well, that's the purpose of this small council meeting," Stark said.

Varys became very interested all of a sudden.

"Please sit at the temporary small council table. It's not as grand as what you have in King's Landing, I'm sure."

The table was fine enough. The head of the table, for the King, remained empty. The right hand seat, for the Hand, was Ned's but unused. Stark remained standing.

Varys selected a seat near the end of the table. The farther away for better distance, enhanced vision of a wide game.

"Anyone thirsty?" Lord Stark asked.

When people voiced their requests, Lord Stark served them himself. An interesting idea. No servants to keep the meeting more secure, but Ned serving with his own hand made him seem more humble.

Varys was the only one to decline. He had the feeling he needed his head about him.

Ned handed out the libations quickly. He handed the last glass to Baelish.

The Master of Coin approved of his drink. Even when smiling he looked like he was about to plunder a field full of baby lambs.

"Why are we meeting in a tent?" Baelish asked.

"I've had it set for us. We had a small fire three weeks ago inside. An assassin, we believe. My apartments were the most heavily damaged," Stark said. "At present, we have nothing fit for the small council to meet."

"Where will we stay?" Renly asked.

"The King survived the attempt?" Varys asked, at the same time.

Ned looked to Varys, slighting Renly.

"The King wasn't the intended victim, we don't think. My son was, Bran."

"Your son is more important than the King?" Grand Master Maester Pycelle asked.

He sounded fully in control of his vast faculties. He must have forgone his usual dozing pose when he realized this was a real meeting, with real stakes.

"Yes. At least for one day he was," Lord Stark said.

Varys stopped even trying to ask questions. Lord Stark wouldn't say what he meant until it was time.

"I want to see my brother," Renly said.

Stannis made no similar demand.

"He may join us. I doubt it. He is largely the subject of this meeting," Lord Stark said.

"Is the Queen joining us?" Pycelle asked. A Lannister partisan to his core.

"No."

No mealy-mouthed bantering about that.

The King may come. The Queen wouldn't.

Perhaps there was plenty of interest in this corner of the realm. Ned Stark had been up to something. Varys hadn't heard a single word by raven.

Interesting and troubling.

"Where is Robert?" Renly demanded.

"He needs a regent," Lord Stark said.

The table exploded with questions.

Was he sick? Was he dying? Was he insane? Was Ned this regent? Who the hell was Lord Stark to make that assessment? On and on.

The Lord of Winterfell waited out the questions. "He is healthier now than when he arrived. In body, at least. But the attack of three weeks ago exposed some truths that the King didn't react well to. He is, my Maester tells me, demented. He may recover. But, as of now, he tips between a tearful depression and a rage I have never seen the like of."

Yes, Varys was now sure, he was glad he made this journey. He was unhappy not to have had advanced notice of this particular topic.

What a delightful trick to open the meeting.

Varys didn't even care if it were true.

Lord Stark was an interesting fellow.

He would pay for all of this, but he was entertaining.

"Truths?" Stannis asked. "What truths?"

He asked like he already knew the answer.

"What you suspected, Lord Stannis. What you and Jon Arryn suspected, yes."

Stannis had a pronounced look of disgust on his face, but he didn't elaborate.

"All of you have your spy networks in King's Landing. A few of you even tried to get networks going here once you realized that King Robert was coming north. I, of course, have my own spies in the south. A necessity."

Varys had never found one bit of evidence. Until now.

No one was asking questions now.

Lord Stark had no intention of denying them the show. He had spent his time well. He had really prepared something of interest. That suited Varys. The more chaos in Robert's court the better for Varys and his plans. Bring it on by the wheelbarrowful.

But that he hadn't known in advance.

That he didn't forgive.

"Let me explain. My son Bran was pushed off a tower about seven weeks ago. He's alive, awake, but will probably never recover the use of his legs. So I investigated. I had my best people help me. We discovered what precipitated the attack on my son and then we laid a trap. Before Bran awoke, we let a rumor fly that not only was he awake, but he remembered everything. The people who commissioned this violence against my family commissioned more. The attack that destroyed several sections of my apartments came that night. We were expecting a knife or a sword. They sent a sorceror. Magic."

Varys wore the disgust now. If there was one thing he could get behind it was death to magicians. He tolerated the magical creatures, like the now-extinct dragon, because a magical creature was not responsible for its own outsized power. It was born with the capability. But people who went deep into the knowledge of the black magic - Varys would see them all dead.

If not for his own amusement, then for the salvation of the realm.

Magic upended all games.

"We survived, obviously. Not easily. We got not only the sorceror but the people he worked for. The incestuous couple Cersei and Jaime Lannister."

Varys looked around the table. Renly hadn't known. No one else seemed to find it much of a surprise.

"Robert went mad, not as mad as the Mad King, but close. He ordered his wife and her brother, their children, all killed. I helped to commute the death sentences to other punishments."

Varys did find that remarkable. Lord Stark was not known for his mercy. Robert was not known for changing his mind.

"What are they?" Stannis asked. "The punishments, I mean."

"Jaime and Joffrey have been sent to the Wall. Myrcella and Tommen are my wards. At an appropriate age, they will select careers of service. Myrcella will likely train as a Septa. Perhaps Tommen will go to the Citadel and train as a Maester."

"And Cersei?"

"Dispatched to the Silent Sisters."

That was mercy, perhaps, compared to death. But not very merciful. Varys was a little bit impressed.

"Does Lord Lannister know that his immediate family is smashed?" Stannis asked.

"Tyrion was guilty of no crime."

Varys definitely liked that. That would make Tywin Lannister all the more incensed. His golden children stolen from him, but not the broken one.

"Where is the Imp?" Baelish asked.

"He has accepted our hospitality for the time."

Varys took that to mean he was a hostage.

"You have extensive whore houses?" Varys asked.

"Tyrion isn't bored," Stark said without a touch of humor.

"So why is Robert not himself?" Renly asked.

"I do not know. Almost two decades of lies. He is not recovering well or fast. The Kingdoms need a ruler as I will shortly explain. I propose that Stannis becomes Regent until Robert recovers."

Varys actually leaned forward at that proposal.

Ned Stark had all the power in the world to make himself Regent. To be the King. He could have been King over Robert so many years earlier, when the Targaryen's were broken. He had at least as much claim as Robert. Robert lost a fiancee, a Stark girl. Eddard Stark lost a father, a brother, a sister.

For the second time, Lord Stark handed the crown to someone else; once he'd let Robert take the crown and this time he handed it directly to Stannis. This game was incredible.

Varys took a second to check the other faces.

Stannis hadn't expected the offer. Renly hated it. Actually, all of them hated it, perhaps even Stannis.

There was a creature of deep thought underneath the brutal skin of this lord of the North.

"Hold on," Renly said. "Hold on, I am Master of Laws. We don't even know if you, Lord Stark, are the Hand of the King. Robert hasn't told us or written us anything to that effect. You can't just...you can't just do this."

"I just have," Lord Stark said. "Stannis, would you like to see your brother? See what your task might just be - before you accept?"

The eldest Baratheon was still stunned. He was slow to do anything, think or move or speak. "Yes, thank you. I had better see him before I do anything else. Thank you."

"Lester will take you into Winterfell. I've set you a room in Robert's apartment. If you become Regent, you can change things around however you see fit."

A guard near the tent flap stepped out and then waited.

"Alright. Will you still be meeting?" Stannis asked.

"For some time. There are other problems, other ripples," Lord Stark said.

Varys was all about other problems, other ripples. It was his life's work.

He had also heard no noises about other problems.

Hang Robert.

Varys cared about what House Stark was doing.

"Perhaps I should stay," Stannis said.

"That is your choice," Lord Stark said.

Had Ned refused, Stannis would have insisted he remain. He was the most contrary sort of man.

"I'll see Robert first."

"I'm going too," Renly said.

Stannis looked like he objected, but then he nodded.

They both departed the tent. The argument between them started before they were out of listening range. It was a loud one, very unhappy.

Three brothers who couldn't get along under any circumstances.

That was what the realm depended upon at this moment.

Three feuding brothers.

"What are these other problems?" Baelish asked. "We've already had quite a journey and a very eventful first briefing with the new Hand of the King."

Baelish wanted time to consult his spies. He also had been caught without warning.

At least it wasn't just Varys.

"The problem is north of the wall," Lord Stark said.

Both Baelish and Pycelle rolled their eyes at that.

Of course the Warden of the North would be concerned about the wall and the little wretches who survived above it. The wildlings.

"We have confirmed that the oldest enemy of man has returned. The creatures that are made of ice, the creatures that can pour a form of life back into the dead. The Other. The White Walkers. Whatever you care to call them."

"Child's terror. Not real," Pycelle said. "Stories. Not even very good stories."

"Then you may go to the wall yourself and take a ride with the Watch. They will show you."

Pycelle didn't appreciate the verbal slap.

"I make a commitment of one hundred thousand pounds of grain to the Night's Watch. Also, two thousand steer and five thousand head of sheep. Four thousand swine. Eight hundred horses. Three thousand well-forged swords."

Were the Starks really that wealthy in food, horses, and weapons - that well provisioned that they could give away thousands of animals and ton after ton of grain just as winter arrived? Varys hadn't known it. This far north and they could compete with the Tyrells of Highgarden?

In his line of work, the danger came from the things one didn't know or the connections one didn't make. Varys was both amused and very unhappy at how today unraveled.

"How can they use that much more support?" Baelish asked. "They operate three fortresses. It's, what, two thousand men total. What are they going to do with eight hundred more horses and three thousand more swords?"

"We have to reopen sixteen fortresses along the Wall," Stark said. "Staff them, stock them, support them."

"What?" Pycelle asked. "Do you know how expensive that will be..."

"I thought that was my line," Petyr Baelish said. He was Master of Coin. Master of begging for loans.

"That is the commitment of House Stark. Are there any other donations? Any volunteers?"

Varys realized that Stark was serious.

He meant this. He wasn't just stirring trouble.

Varys turned his head and stared at the tent wall, the part he thought faced north. Ned Stark couldn't be telling the truth. Others walking around, causing fresh trouble.

"You haven't proven your case," Varys said.

"The size of my commitment proves my case."

There was truth in that.

If he was honest.

"I'll supply all the whores," Baelish said. He laughed.

Stark didn't change his expression.

Like he'd already heard the joke before Petyr told it.

"I am an old man. My days as a warrior, sadly, are long past," the Grand Maester said.

"They never came. You aren't much of a maester, but you stay bought when the Lannisters pay you. That's your use, Pycelle. I can't do with you as I wish, unless I don't care about enraging the Citadel. So, you are my guest in Winterfell. I've a nice dungeon set for you. Then you and I will speak more of Tywin Lannister and what you've done for him over the last three decades. What you didn't do for Jon Arryn when he lay dying of poison."

Pycelle sealed his mouth. Hence, confirming his guilt.

"What exactly is this?" Varys said.

The meeting had just become ominous to a degree Varys hadn't felt since the sacking of King's Landing.

"Ser Geras? Please bring in the prisoner."

A moment later, the rear of the tent opened and a knight escorted a woman in.

Varys recognized her. Baelish went pale upon seeing her.

"The widow of Jon Arryn. She had an interesting tale to tell, Lord Baelish."

"She's your wife's sister."

"Yes. She first lied to my wife in a letter, accused the Lannisters of killing Lord Arryn. But, to me, she told the truth. She killed her husband - with the assistance of Petyr Baelish."

Lord Baelish sat stunned for a moment, a short moment, before he rose and began to speak.

"You make many speeches and tell many stories, my Lord. I haven't heard any proof as of yet."

"This will be tried by the small council."

"This set of whispers isn't worthy of a trial."

"The trial has already begun. I administered to you, to your cup, the same poison you acquired for Lysa Arryn. She still had the poison with her. If you die, you're guilty. If not, then her confession to me was another lie. You'll be acquitted, my Lord."

The look on Baelish's face told the truth.

Lord Stark just watched. He seemed a patient sort.

Pycelle moved down the table a few chairs to the seat Stannis had vacated.

"Perhaps you were innocent after all," Lord Stark said.

That was when Baelish cried out.

"Or Lysa Arryn spoke the truth."

For five minutes Baelish clawed at himself. The pain must have been incredible.

Varys didn't allow himself to look away. His eyes turned between the dying and the deadly. Lord Stark was far different than Varys remembered, even harder if that were possible.

Once Baelish was dead, Lord Stark turned his attentions back to Lysa Arryn.

"I told you my wife would insist I spare you," Ned told the gaunt woman.

"I'm grateful."

"I didn't tell her of your crimes. She doesn't know yet. She can't beg for your life."

Lord Stark drew his blade, Ice, and beheaded his sister-in-law.

He took his time cleaning the blood off the weapon.

"There is nothing worse in this world than the murder of a family member. A husband killing a wife; a wife a husband. Anyone murdering a child. Jon Arryn's child is now my ward."

Lord Stark turned to Pycelle.

Pycelle was frozen in his seat. Varys knew the man had engineered many moments of blood-letting in his career, but he'd never been in the room for one. Perhaps he feared for his own neck.

Lord Stark walked to the opening of the tent.

"Ser Barristan, would you help the Grand Maester to his accommodations? He doesn't seem to agree with the discussion."

The knight did just that. Pycelle didn't fight him at all.

"So, Varys, it is you and me."

Lord Stark did sit down finally, across from Varys. He hadn't sheathed his sword. Instead, he laid it upon the table.

"Impressive," Varys said.

"Flattery might work in Flea Bottom, but not here. Not with Northerners."

"I see."

"I have your legacy, the one you arranged long ago. Everyone was so sure that all the Targaryen's were dead or banished, no one bothered to look closer to these shores. I did."

Varys swallowed.

"Your Aegon the Sixth, his protector Jon Connington, your plan to put a Targaryen back on the throne. The boy's hair is almost silver again once I stopped his efforts at keeping it dyed. Just looking at him makes me want to sharpen my sword on his ribs."

Not only has Varys not expected any of this, but Lord Stark had unraveled one of Varys' deepest schemes. It was surely his oldest one.

"How?" Varys muttered.

He was capable of only a syllable.

"King Robert the First gave an order to kill any Targaryen in Westeros."

"No," Varys hissed.

"I commute the sentences of Aegon and Jon Connington. They are to join the Night's Watch. Aegon will find at least one other Targaryen up there, although I'm told Aemon is now blind or mostly blind."

They wouldn't die now. They would die fighting the Other. If such a foe did exist.

Varys could still save them.

He could still bring his plan about, to return House Targaryen to the Iron Throne.

"Varys," the bastard Stark said.

He had gotten inside the network of informers Varys used somehow. He had dug down to the very deepest root and pulled.

"It's Lord Varys." Best to play for a bit of power. Wouldn't work, but the effort might lodge something in Stark's mind.

A bit of caution.

"Varys, you are obviously no longer Master of Whisperers."

Varys laughed. "I understood that."

"You shouldn't have held the post under Robert at all. I believe I cautioned him against you."

"It was more than that."

"Well, I recommended Robert kill you after he took the throne. Not good to kill the previous king and then keep his staff in place. As you've proven. And Pycelle and Tywin Lannister, too. You were just waiting for your little infant Aegon to get old enough. Had to let King Robert last another year or two? A thirteen-year-old king is too young. But a sixteen-year-old might just work."

"Something like that," Varys admitted. "Who have you selected to replace me?"

Varys always worked for an advantage.

"I will not select the next Master of Whisperers. I shall resign as Hand in a week. The next poor bastard can decide. Or Stannis as Regent."

"I don't understand your game, Ned."

"Ned? Alright, call me Ned. You'll never understand my game. I told you everything I care about today and you can't see the truth in it."

Not yet he couldn't.

"You have two choices. You may join the Night's Watch - or you may serve as the King's emissary to Khal Drogo."

That was not a name Ned Stark should know. "Who?"

"You know. The husband of the other, very last Targaryen, or the second to last or the third to last. How many others did you manage to stash away?"

Plans within plans.

"You want me to murder her? Fail at the attempt? Let these horse people kill me?" Varys asked.

That brought a smile to the madman's face. As if a realm without House Targaryen in it could ever be stable. That was what Varys wanted. A general stability.

"No. You will have orders not to harm her," Lord Stark said.

"Not to harm her?"

"Your task is to carry a letter. Deliver it to her. Keep your neck if you can manage it. Escort her back if she chooses to come."

So it wasn't exile, not really?

Ned really was playing a game with rules Varys couldn't understand.

"You're inviting her back. You? You were involved in slaughtering her family. She won't accept," Varys said.

"She should. She has nothing to fear from me. After all, she will be escorting three small dragons, three living dragons back. I don't think she'll feel unsafe."

"You're giving her the throne?"

"I told you that the problem is the Wall. We need those dragons. Left to her own devices, she'll dally is Essos for years. We need the dragons in six months, nine months. They'll need time to grow, of course, but we need them."

No one had ever sounded surer making a proclamation than this Lord Stark did.

How could he know?

Because he sounded totally committed. He knew every word he said he was true. He knew there were three. He wanted them here. As if he wouldn't have to fear them. Everyone feared dragons.

Varys stopped breathing for a moment. How was Stark getting better intelligence - perfect intelligence, actually - far better than anything Varys had managed.

Magic.

Varys hated magic, but he understood it. It had to be magic.

These damned Old Gods up here. There were rumors of wargs north of the wall. There had to be something else happening now.

Lord Stark had a court magician. A powerful one to convince him.

"You have a sorceror, a diviner, in your employ," Varys said.

Varys was now the only person who knew this. He had to get this message out. Even at the cost of his own life.

The bastard Stark smiled. "Correct."

"Kill him. Kill her. Kill them now," Varys demanded. "A dragon is one thing. But a diviner? You cannot."

"You are so focused on the Iron Throne. It is already broken. It will never exist again. People will keep trying to conquer it, but there is nothing to it. It is a hollowed-out symbol. The Kingdoms, such as mine here at Winterfell, will be the powers going forward."

"You and your diviner will ensure it? You mustn't."

Two decades of Varys' life were crushed.

All it took was Ned Stark believing in a madman who wasn't wrong with his predictions.

"The wall or the journey, Varys?"

"I will go to her. If you let me see the diviner die at the end of your sword."

"I didn't give you the right to set conditions. You want to go to the Wall? They'll have dire need of organizers in just a few months. You could have a short life, a valuable life there."

"Oh, no. You've asked the questions. Is it a demon's voice that leads you this way?"

"No voice. Just images, Varys."

"Even worse. All the easier to show you the lies you wish to see."

"One final time? Will you go to the Wall or to Essos?"

"I will find this diviner and kill him."

"Unfortunately, I knew that would be the answer," Stark said. He rose from his chair and stepped to the side. His slightly raised hand dropped.

A signal.

Three arrows entered Varys' chest, pinning him into his chair while he began to bleed.

Varys tried to form words. _Kill the diviner._

He couldn't make the words.

It was against the gods, a diviner. It was the blackest of all magic, even necromancy. Kill the diviner.

"So you understand the danger you smelled but didn't recognize. A follower of the old gods like myself will never kill a guest. Never. But this isn't my house I invited you into. A house is a structure of stone up in the North, Varys. I invited you all in, but you were never my guests. Lord Baelish was right to ask the question, but none of you understood what a tent means to a Northman. It means nothing."

Lord Stark didn't smile. He found none of this amusing.

"Lord Robert would never have declared his own children bastards, by the way. He is a coward through and through, quite attached to the idea of a legacy, even a cruel lie like Joffrey 'Baratheon.' We tried and tried to find some way to make that happen, to have Robert publicly admit the truth. So we had to resort to a potion. We're keeping him quite demented for now. I didn't think I had it in me to be this rotten, like you. But I will not see the Other living in my land. I will not see you or Lannister or anyone else hollowing out my family. You should not have attempted to play games with House Stark. It took shedding our honor, but we must survive."

Lord Stark turned to the opening and bellowed out the word (or name), "Leviden."

A kind of armored man, or servant, ran into the tent.

"Petyr Baelish and Lysa Tully, once known as Lysa Arryn, have been executed for the crime of murder. Lord Varys has violated King Robert's oldest rule concerning the Targaryen family. All three will be buried under the King's Road as per our traditions. Never to rest, never to feel peace."

A small crew entered the tent and began wrapping the dead Baelish and the rather bloody Lysa Arryn. Varys was pinned into his chair as he was forced to watch it all.

A knight entered the tent.

"Ser Barristan…" Varys whispered. _Kill the diviner._

He couldn't get out the words.

The knight paid Varys no mind.

Lord Stark turned to the head of the Kingsguard.

"Ser Barristan Selmy, you will be emissary to the khaleesi, Daenerys Targaryen. Please tell her advisor Jorah Mormont that Varys is dead. Jorah's days as a spy are over. Bring him back to us if you can. His father could use him on the Wall."

X-X

Chapter 5: Stannis Baratheon

Stannis looked at his brother and thought the man's eyes showed some sign of recognition. They'd been in Winterfell three days already. He had moved himself into Robert's apartment. Renly had taken only one night in his own room before he'd demanded, not asked, to join them. It was cramped, but it felt safer.

Three brothers protecting each other. If they could survive each other and face their common enemy.

Robert was still a shell of a man, his body strong enough but his mind hollowed out. He was a prisoner under Ned Stark, a figurehead. He'd been that, too, in King's Landing, but this place felt more dangerous.

Compared to the late Petyr Baelish and Varys the Eunuch, Ned Stark was a far more direct sort of person.

What had happened in that tent, Stannis heard from servants. He needed to get that information out. He needed to heal Robert, if he could be healed, and get him back onto his throne. That was the only path to safety. They'd all been fools to travel north to this place.

Stannis charged himself with seeing both of them safe.

He had no particular love for his younger brothers, either Robert or Renly, but family was family.

"Why are we still alive?" Stannis asked Renly.

Renly shook his head.

"I've known Ned a long time. I can't figure this out, not at all. If he wanted the Iron Throne he should have killed all of us. Pycelle is in the dungeon. Ser Barristan is sent into exile or something. Then we're given this generous apartment. I don't understand."

"He's crazier than Robert."

"We need to get him out of here," Stannis said to Renly. He might not like Robert, but he hated Renly. Still he had a duty to his family.

Renly just nodded. "How? They'll hunt us down."

It took them seven days to prepare. Seven terror-filled days. Stannis heard what had happened to Varys and Petyr Baelish. Their murders. Ned Stark had just performed a perfect coup, but he hadn't finished all the needed steps. There were three Baratheon brothers still alive.

Stannis used several spies to arrange things. They acquired horses and food and warmer clothing. They arranged for a river boat and send ahead for a sea-going vessel.

The plan was simple and went undetected. On a full moon, the three of them would ride horses to the nearest branch of the river, then take a boat to White Harbor, where they'd transfer to a ship that could take them back to King's Landing.

During that week of terror, Stannis and Renly did everything they were supposed to.

They met when Ned Stark called small council meetings. They dined with the Stark family. They kept in good cheer.

Then on the night of the full moon they carried Robert out of Winterfell and tied him into a horse.

Three days later they made it through the hills and forests to the river.

A week after they departed Winterfell they were in White Harbor. They boarded their ship and then they had a bit of a scare.

Stannis found a letter from Ned Stark in their belongings along with the badge of office for the Hand of the King.

He had known they were leaving before they did it.

He had permitted it. He hadn't chased them. He hadn't had them murdered.

Stannis read the letter and then Renly snatched it away.

Stannis read it again, all the way to the end.

_Stannis, Robert, and Renly,_

_Go with my blessing. I wish you the safest voyage back to King__'s Landing. My first suggestion: the jealousy between brothers will kill more than a twenty-day storm at sea. Do not let the resentments fester._

_I have returned the badge of office Robert gave to me. Select a new Hand of the King worthy of the heavy burden of office. You__'ll need someone as gifted as Jon Arryn to manage the complexity. Hunt well._

_One last suggestion: I would enjoy the pleasures of White Harbor for a week at least before selecting a ship. The seas this time of the year are unhappy at best. Winter is coming, but you can tarry a week to ensure a better voyage._

_I mourn that I will never see any of my old friends ever again,_

_Eddard Stark of Winterfell_

_King of the North_

Stannis and Renly were both pale.

"I don't believe it. It's a trick," Renly said. "He couldn't have known."

Stannis ignored Renly and he also ignored most of the letter. He honed in on the advice about remaining in White Harbor. "It would be a week of waiting for another vessel. His spies are among us. Someone had to have snuck this message to us after we got into White Harbor."

"Right," Renly said. "After. He couldn't have known. The Gods, I was going crazy over a letter."

"We sail on the tide," Stannis said. He was Master of Ships for his brother. He did know a little something about navies.

They sailed.

Into the worst storms, three of them, that should have wracked the ship they were on. The ship Stannis selected sucked in sea water like it was dying of a thirst. Stannis vomited for at least part of the day for twenty days straight. Renly and Robert had it far worse. Renly came close to dying because he became unable to hold down even a bit of food.

Twenty days of storms. Two men washed off the ship. A deadly voyage, for sure, as Ned's letter had hinted.

In the end, they arrived very gaunt in King's Landing.

Robert the King. Stannis the Regent. Renly the Hand of the King.

They'd agreed to a temporary truce.

Robert was almost sane again. Twenty days of vomiting had fully purged his body. The Starks had poisoned him or something.

Robert was angry and also grateful that his bastards were gone, his wife banished, his disloyal Kingsguard Jaime Lannister sent to the Wall. Stannis had to listen to all of it.

Robert acted like like his old self now that he wasn't as still as a stout tree.

Stannis couldn't in good conscience release the Regency.

Robert shut himself away in his rooms. There was no Master of Coins to acquire fresh loans. There was no spy master to tell him — or an intermediary — what was happening. There were just a stream of orders from Robert to Renly. Orders to have Daenerys Targaryen murdered or a contract issued for Ned Stark or Jaime Lannister or which ever enemy appeared back in Robert's thoughts.

Stannis remained Regent and approved none of it.

Why start a war the Kingdom couldn't afford?

Tywin Lannister was already preparing to sack Winterfell for what the Starks had done to the Lannisters.

Why bother to borrow money to pay for it when the Lannisters would do all this for free?

Stannis endured a mountain of complaints from Renly.

Twenty days after Robert arrived back in King's Landing he was dead. He had feasted for three hours — the rumors added that Robert and three whores were the only attendees at the feast — and the maester explained that his stomach burst open from the excess.

The succession was a disaster.

Stannis didn't want to be Regent. He definitely didn't want to be King. But the other obvious choice was Renly, a boy-man unfit even to select the clothes he'd wear that day.

The arguments became fierce between them.

Finally, the High Septon settled the argument and found for Stannis. Stannis would owe some serious favors for a ruling he didn't want.

Stannis the First, the Reluctant King.

It turned out he also became Stannis the Uncrowned King.

Renly and his hired monsters took care of that.

A day before Robert's funeral, Stannis walked alone to a meeting Renly had requested to quiet the bad blood between them.

Stannis never said what he'd prepared in his mind.

Renly hadn't wanted to make up. He wanted to become the next King.

Renly came with men, many men. Three of them stabbed Stannis before Renly ordered them out of the room.

"Well paid, I hope?" Stannis asked.

"It's not that expensive to murder a king," Renly said. "Or an almost king."

Renly walked in front of his brother and crouched down. "I'll give you a grand funeral. I promise."

"No deal, brother."

Stannis wasn't much of a fighter. A thinker, yes. A fighter, no. But Renly was even less gifted in the martial realms.

Renly couldn't defend himself when Stannis produced a dagger and plunged it into his brother's chest. He might have gone unaccompanied to this meeting; he hadn't gone unarmed.

"The world deserves a better King than you, than me, than Robert."

"Ahh," Renly called out.

All the sellswords in the world couldn't save him now.

As Stannis lay on the stone, bleeding black blood, a fatal wound if there ever was one, he realized that Ned's letter had been correct. Two men had perished on the ship; now three passengers, three brothers, were dead or dying.

Before the next winter arrived, House Baratheon was extinguished. From being the house of kings to being faded memory.

Stannis took no comfort from that. He had been told what not to do and he had done it anyway. His brother the King was dead. His brother, the traitor, was dying. They were all dead.

"I should have listened to Ned Stark," Stannis said. "He was a monster, but he wasn't wrong."

X-X

Chapter 6: Ned Stark

Ned clutched the message from King's Landing. All three Baratheons were now dead. Seventeen men now contended to become the next king on the Iron Throne — or the Poison Throne.

He handed the message to Maester Luwin.

"Yes, I'm sorry, my Lord."

"Robert would still be alive if he'd stayed here or even in White Harbor," Ned said. "All this death was inevitable once they got to King's Landing. I told them. They didn't listen."

"That is the curse of the diviner."

This must have been how Ned's Great Aunt felt every day of her life.

"He'd still be alive if I showed him the icy bowl."

"Perhaps, my Lord. Alive and telling tales."

"Well, how can more tales hurt us? We already have Tywin Lannister coming to massacre us in our beds. Even with his grandchildren Myrcella and Tommen sheltering here. Even with Tyrion here. He doesn't care. We've started the war that was necessary. Now we just have to hope it's short."

"I received word that Tywin has declared himself Regent for his grandson Joffrey."

"A member, even an involuntary member, of the Night's Watch can hold no office like that," Ned said, unsmiling. He was the architect of a huge bloodletting that would only accelerate in the coming years. He and Luwin would reshape Westeros in horrible ways.

Today was the beginning of the Stark preparations. In Winterfell, the hall overflowed with Lord Stark's bannermen and their staffs.

It had been difficult to decide on how to organize everyone. To protect the good people as much as possible. To provide safety to as many of the foot soldiers as they could. To capture as many healthy Lannisters as possible, more bodies for the fortresses along the wall.

It wasn't a perfect plan. But it was as good as he and Luwin had been able to craft. It cut off the heads of the very worst people Lord Stark had to defend against.

"I think everyone has had a chance to break their fast, my Lord," Luwin said.

Ned nodded.

He stood first, unlocked the door to his study, and proceeded down to the hall. Eyes snapped to him as soon as Ned walked into the room.

The hall was silent within in a minute.

The people in the room were nervous. This was their second day in Winterfell and Ned had spoken to most of them. Consulting them or appearing to. Listening to their ideas or the pleas to be appointed to this or that critical post. This was the first large gathering, the first and only formal meeting.

Now it was time to say what Ned could, outline the plan, reveal in language no one would catch who would live and who would die.

"Men of the North, this is now our hour. Our enemy is on foot and on horse. Our spies have confirmed it. The Lannister force, at least fifteen thousand strong, is eight days away. We have no more time to counsel. We have enemies coming from the south. We have wildlings coming in numbers from the north. We have to decide. Many of you were very helpful, but the horrible duty to decide falls on me.

"This is the plan. Roose Bolton will lead our outer defensive force. He and Walder Frey have contributed the largest number of troops for this force. They will greet the Lannister troops two days ride north of the Twins."

The crowd liked that idea very much. They gave a rousing cheer.

"The Karstarks have supplied the bulk of our inner defensive force. Lord Karstark and Edmure Tully will command that force. They will not have the benefit of a fixed base. They must be ready to move and we must be ready to keep up the supply lines.

"Many of you were concerned about spies. I agree. We have already intercepted a few. Lannister spies, Crakehalls, Tyrell spies, spies from the Citadel. Everyone looks to the north now. I have put together a force of spy catchers headed by Howland Reed with Ramsay Snow as his chief deputy.

"I will maintain overall command from the tents outside Winterfell. I place Theon Greyjoy and my son Robb on my own staff. All three of us will sleep and eat in those tents until the North is safe again. I will not sleep better at night than the men in the field. I will not shelter under stone walls and ceilings. However, all women and children are offered places inside Winterfell. We have greatly expanded our lodgings. We can hold out under siege for a very long time if the need should ever come."

The men in the room cheered, at the least the one who weren't despondent about their lack of prominent office. Ned knew what many of this officers faced: death. He would not wish to share the fate of Roose Bolton or his bastard Ramsay Snow. Or what would befall Theon Greyjoy.

Ned knew.

They would be in places where they — and not others — would be captured or fall in battle.

"One more order. We must supply the Night's Watch with undamaged men. The Wall needs live bodies. Do not kill indiscriminately. Let Tywin Lannister help support the North. He sends us all these armed men. Let us make them useful. Right?"

More cheering.

He drank with them. He answered their questions. He fed them. Then he got them all on their marches.

Ned retired to his chamber alone now that Cat kept a separate apartment. Ned's execution of Lysa Tully, or Lysa Arryn, was still a bleeding thorn binding them together.

"Maester Luwin, I could barely give the orders."

"It's set how it has to be set. More of the good will live this way. The evil will perish in the clash. The people that the Lannisters would be able to buy, they won't have hands to accept the coins. You have saved as many as possible for the war yet to come. We still don't know how many we'll need or where or when."

Ned had hoped to have a full plan well scouted.

He could see anything after all.

Anything Tywin Lannister concocted or what the late Varys had been doing — yes.

Anything of man the bowl could divine.

However, anything of magic was where the bowl stuttered. It could show the existence of the Others, of dragons, those priests of that Red God, any kind of magic. Sometimes, not reliably. It wouldn't answer questions about how this or that tactic would work against the Others. Whether the dragons should be used in the field or set to forging new dragon glass weapons - none of those questions gave answers that meant anything.

He could ask about people, about places. He could see the Others or the dragons as they interacted with a person. But not well, there was a fuzziness to the sight.

Ask about how the Others the dragons got on and the question produced utter nonsense.

Luwin had decided what this meant. The bowl's magic was powerful, but it wasn't more powerful than the magic of the Others or the dragons.

Ned had done as much as he could, as much as the bowl helped him to see. He would have a blooded, trained army ready to respond when the first breeches of the Wall occurred.

For the real battle was in the future.

X-X

Chapter 7: Ned Stark

Ned walked out of his tent and made his way to the new, large cemetery that now sat outside Winterfell. It was a recent addition to the world, like many other things, in the six months since the King of the North unleashed his army. A new cemetery, a new Westeros, a new House Stark.

Ned stopped at a grave that was mounded with dirt less than a week old.

The name plate hadn't even been constructed for it yet, but Ned had been here for the burial. It was Maester Luwin's final home. After his body had been burned.

The Others could and did resurrect dead, whole bodies, after all.

All the bodies in the cemetery were burned. All the bodies in the Stark crypt as well before the ashes were reinterred. Just to be sure.

Ned know understood one of the problems with what he and Luwin had done. He had thought he knew what was happening. He had stopped asking gruesome questions, even if Maester Luwin hadn't.

Maester Luwin had left a note for Ned before he'd gone on his last task for House Stark.

To occupy the assassin who'd been sent by the Lannisters to dispose of Grand Maester Pycelle, long a creature of House Lannister and filled with its secrets.

The assassin's secondary mission — as Luwin knew from asking the icy bowl questions — was to kill Lord Stark.

Luwin kept the assassin from succeeding in either mission, at the cost of his own life.

Lord Stark was silent as he knelt in front of the grave.

For Luwin to do what he did, sacrifice himself…

It reminded Lord Stark that not everyone could survive in the trade-offs. Even if a person remembered to ask every necessary question.

Ned had been swift to sacrifice others. He had kept some of his army in the dark when a raiding party of the Others breeched the Wall. Ned had kept scouts far away from them and had permitted them to travel a good ways south. Far enough that they were observed by the scouts of many houses, enough witnesses that they were believed. After all, hundreds of men died destroying the Others.

House Stark had survived intact up until Luwin's death. It had reaped all the benefits, along with its truest allies. House Stark's enemies were also reformed or smashed. Sacrificed according to Ned and Luwin's planning.

For one, Balon Greyjoy was dead, killed in his castle during a peasant revolt. Theon the Coward, the one who would have sacked Winterfell given half an opportunity, was dead of an unlucky arrow loosed on the battlefield.

The Bolton line was extinguished. Including its notable bastard who had been captured and tortured for most of a week.

All the males of the Frey family were dead. The Twins had been destroyed completely by the Lannisters. The women who had come north to Winterfell were still well, although sad.

Tywin Lannister was still alive, but badly wounded in the field. His forces had helped repel the Others when more parties of them punched holes in the wall and came within two days march of Casterly Rock.

The Lannisters were fully devoted to the problems in the North now.

"Thank you for the reminder, Maester Luwin," Ned said. "I'm sorry I needed it. I'm sorry I had forgotten about the other half of honor: sacrifice. I won't forget again."

He rose from the grave and made his way into Winterfell. Since the war began he hadn't gone inside the stone walls often and hadn't slept inside them at all.

But he had one last task he had to perform inside the most secure rooms.

He stopped to talk with Sansa, his oldest daughter, briefly. Cat pretended she didn't see him. He spoke with many of his family's retainers.

He let none of them know about the major offensive that would start today.

After all, if he told them he might just give away the one truth he couldn't tell. Ned knew he would die. Today. The icy bowl wouldn't tell him the things he most wanted to know about the Others or where the hell the dragons were and that silly Targaryen girl, but he could ask about his family, his wife, his home at Winterfell. It gave him the indirect information he needed to see what was what.

Getting answers from the icy bowl was much harder since Luwin had sacrificed himself. Ned had never become that good at asking it the right questions. But he had spent considerable time over the last few days working this out.

The bowl could tell him this much: if Ned stayed near Winterfell, the Others would come to this place and sack it as well. Perhaps not today, but within the month.

If he rode north two hours, he would find himself in an ambush with some of the strongest of the Others. He would assuredly fall but Winterfell — because of Ned's sacrifice, he hoped but didn't know for sure, the bowl couldn't make that guarantee — would outlast the Others and this Winter.

His family would survive for at least a little longer. He'd confirmed at least two more generations.

Arya would wed a year after Sansa took a husband. Both would marry Northmen.

Ned had nudged Arya to love the bow rather than the sword. The sword in any form would have led his daughter out of Westeros. But the bow would tie her to the North. So she would be the best archer in the North, man or woman. Just give her two more years.

Bran would meet a man/creature who would eventually heal him enough so that Bran would walk. That had been one of the great things Ned had seen in the bowl.

Rickon's future was far more gray. Ned, without Luwin's assistance, couldn't ask just the right questions to narrow down what would happen to the boy. But he could either become a grand hero or a horrible villain. In either case, he wouldn't have a long life.

Robb, of all them, would be the biggest problem. His temper was brighter than even Ned's. His wisdom far dimmer. Within two years or thirty months Robb would still be dead. Nothing Ned could do now would save his oldest son. Ned had killed three people who might possibly have betrayed Robb in the future, but his first-born son would still die. Ned could kill friends, enemies, anyone at all. Robb wouldn't live to see his twenty-second name day.

So Ned had spent the past several days of sorrow with Bran. Ostensibly to teach him the bow, but to spend time filling his mind with good things, noble ideals. Ned was training Bran the way that Jon Arryn spent time with a young Ned Stark. Talking rather than teaching, helping the ideas absorb by sharing stories.

Bran would be the longest serving Lord of Winterfell in many centuries. He'd take over after Robb's death and continue until a very advanced age when he'd leave things either to a grandson or a great-grandson. Ned hadn't been able to divine the exact relation.

Bran would practice his magic in secret.

He would have limited skill as a diviner.

Ned had thought about showing Bran the icy bowl, but he couldn't bring himself to curse the young man that way. Let Bran discover things on his own pace.

Ned worked over the fates of the rest. Jon Snow was on the Wall and would survive the Winter. Ned would never get to tell Jon the things the young man should know. But there was a letter. Perhaps the boy would have it arrive in his hands at some point. Robb would never go through Ned's papers, but Ned suspected Bran would. Bran would carry out his proper duties.

Jon could wait for his answers.

Tommen and Myrcella and Jon Arryn's son Robert also would. None of them would ever be normal people. Perhaps they'd reach decent, instead of plunge toward the monstrous. But the way they'd grown up…coddled and curdled and ruined. It was better that all of them took callings and accepted strict monitoring.

Cat refused to spend time with him, of course. He wouldn't be able to heal the rift now. Ned still loved his Cat, though, but she wasn't the woman he had married. She was far less thoughtful, far more petty. He was going to miss her.

Bran would have trouble with her for years, too. He felt badly for Bran on that score.

Ned made his way to this chamber Luwin had set up. He sat in a chair in front of the bowl and did the little ritual. The bowl's contents began to swirl and demand to be used. It was ready to answer a question.

"How can I destroy this bowl?" Ned asked.

He hadn't really expected to get a true answer, but this bowl was commanded to even show this particular truth.

Ned's eyes shot up as he watched the bowl instruct him. Such a base process, such a simple way to destroy this ancient piece of magic.

It was good that he hadn't yet relieved himself. Better still that he wore his sword, that it was Valyrian steel.

Ned poured out the few fragments of ice that had collapsed back from their suspension above the bowl. Then Ned, as shown, took his morning piss in the bowl. Then he set it on a wooden table in the room, unsheathed Ice, and split the hard metal in two, like it was flimsy paper and paste.

The urine didn't hit the floor.

The bowl didn't hit the floor - or any pieces of it.

It just ceased to exist.

Not even a trace.

Crafted from magic; surrendered back to magic.

Ned had done what needed done. It had been an artifact in possession of House Stark, but that need not always be so. Ned would never have this used against the Starks in the future. Varys had been right to some extent. It was a horrible tool. Necessary but horrible for a time.

So now that Luwin was dead and Ned would be, the bowl had to join them. The secret was safe. No one would ever use this artifact to manipulate the world again.

Ned resheathed his sword, didn't bother to reseal the chamber, and left Winterfell for the last time. He had a hard ride ahead of him. A hard battle, too. Ned wanted to take many of Them with him. Not the reanimated bodies, the icy creatures, the masters.

His death would be sung about. It would help to make the Starks permanently in control of their own Kingdom after this was over. No more Iron Throne, no more warring. Just the seven Kingdoms: the Kingdom of the North, the most respected of all.

Strong enough to keep jealous eyes from plotting.

The Others should cleanse their taste for that. For at least a few decades.

X-X

Chapter 8: Bran Stark

A young man already broad of shoulder sat at a table and wrote on paper. He scratched in a date and then paused. He took his time deciding how to proceed.

_It is done. House Stark is mostly whole. We survived even if no one won the massacre. Can anyone ever win a massacre?_

_The Wall is broken, we do not know how to repair the massive fractures in it. We don__'t know how the ancients actually built it so many years ago. We will have to rediscover what they did._

_The Others are broken. They will never know how to repair themselves and rise again. We hope. Still, we must keep in good preparation. We may see their kind again._

_The Dragons perished, all three of them. There are still rumors of dragon eggs hidden, salted away for the day when they might be necessary._

_Daenerys Targaryen returned over the Narrow Sea once more, no longer thirsty for a broken place like King__'s Landing or a throne of iron._

_My sisters are both married and report happiness in their new homes._

_Now the bad news._

_My brother Robb is dead, his ashes interred in the crypt one month ago. I am Lord of Winterfell now. I still think that my father knew this would come to pass. I remember those few days before he died with a lot of fondness, when he set aside his mourning for our Maester and spent his hours speaking with me._

_I realize now he was trying to train me even when he didn__'t have enough time to do so._

_How did he know? Maybe he was cursed with the same kind of dreams I dream._

_Mother is calling herself my Regent. Anytime I do or say something that reminds her of Father she flies into a rage. She is as stable as a rotten wood bridge over a stream._

_I do not recognize her claims of Regency._

_I am Lord of Winterfell and King of the North._

_I must marry within the coming year._

_I will need an heir quickly to make House Stark seem strong once more. The death of Father and Robb and the elevation of a __'damaged boy' as I am sometimes called makes us look like prey._

_Not true, we are Wolves. Always have been._

_It is good that I can walk again. Perhaps I might even write about the process of how this happened, a foolish set of actions that resulted not in my death but in my wholeness._

_It isn__'t so good that I keep dreaming the dreams I do. The suitors for my hand — and especially the schemes of their family members — will be trouble. I wish I could dream of the right woman to marry, but it has not yet come to pass._

_Other dreams have told me much. Mother will be a problem. Kevan Lannister, the eldest survivor of that family, will be a problem. The Tyrells another, its eldest plotting and planning horrible things. The list of problems in the world is very long. I do not complain. The world is safer now, but not yet safe._

_I would rather battle against men than against Others and dragons._

_One remnant of the just-ended wars remain. The priests and priestesses of the Red God. None of us possess the magic necessary to stand against them. I had hoped that the fall of the Others would break the Red God, too. The Dragons fell, after all. The world wanted balance. But it hasn__'t happened yet._

_From my dreams I suspect I will have to devote my energies to the Fire Priests._

_King of the North is also called King of the Ice. Only ice can fight the fire of the Red God. I am still small. I know how to use Father__'s sword, Ice, but I'm not yet large enough to wield it well._

_I will keep these pages secret and safe. I know I am cursed with a long life, but fate can always wing from north to east with just a breeze. I will try to leave my successors something so that they understand what I have done. I am too young to be King of the North. Still, someone must do it. I must._

_I will._

X-X


End file.
